and the associated adrenaline surge that accompanies a competitive situation, though this has yet to be scientifically established. If you did use your HRM in a race and paced yourself according to your training rates, you'd probably be holding yourself back rather

often see round figures quoted in general guides, ranging from 70-90 per cent of MHR. Unfortunately, the reason they’re so vague is that – as we’ve found out – we’re all different.In the early days, you’d have needed a physiological lab test to find

monitor comes in.Speed is often used to regulate threshold sessions, typically at between 10K and 10-mile pace. However, this can be hard to judge, especially when the terrain and/or environmental conditions vary from one session to the next. What’s more

every few minutes as you're running, to get a general idea of your rate throughout the session. You will probably find that, even if you maintain the same pace throughout, your heart rate will rise by 5-10 beats over a period of 30 minutes

, you'd lose your fitness a lot quicker than had you been running regularly for six years.The first elements of fitness you'll have lost are the adaptations within your muscles, in particular the slow twitch fibres. It makes sense to keep the pace down

.Even on longer reps, you'll still need to use trial and error to find a pace you can sustain over the whole session before you can start using your HRM. Once you identify the heart rate corresponding to that pace, you can use the alarm on your monitor to tell you

after a thorough warm-up.Running environmentResearch has shown that you are likely to get slightly higher readings if you run on a treadmill rather than outside. A treadmill can also help you keep level pace in your three-minute bursts, and may help

in higher ambient temperatures in an attempt to cope with this.Turned around, this means that when you run in a hotter climate, your pace will be a bit slower if you stick to your usual heart rates. This isn't as bad as it sounds, because it will make sure